STEVEN GERRARD’S plea has fallen on deaf ears. According to the Liverpool captain, the club’s fortunes in the forthcoming season will hinge upon whether Luis Suarez stays at Anfield.

Suarez is likely to get his transfer because big-time players nearly always do these days

The bleak answer to Gerrard’s urging came yesterday with the publication of a carefully-placed interview in which the selfish, petulant, self-obsessed, ungrateful, cynical and proven racist Suarez declared loudly and clearly that, when it comes to the crunch, He’ll Always Walk Alone.

Just as he trained alone yesterday, the pictures of his one-man session at Melwood capturing graphically the isolation he has now so toxically declared.

Arguably it was a powerful image of where modern football’s path of greed, disloyalty and opportunism can sometimes lead.

Beyond the sheer effrontery of what Suarez has done in a public statement which might as well have been entitled ‘It’s All About Me’ – and in which he blatantly calls Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers a liar – there lies another grim reality for the club’s fans, too.

He is likely to get his transfer because big-time players nearly always do these days.

Judged by the inside analysis of the skipper himself, that indicates the likelihood of another campaign on the fringes of the big time.

Liverpool may again be stuck in their stuttering cycle of regeneration rather than challenging for the title and fighting to get back into the Champions League.

Actually, it isn’t any kind of crunch that has pushed Suarez to this position of confrontation.

He wants Champions League football at 26, he says , offering some faux doe-eyed attempt to seek understanding.

But what price Suarez’s interest in Arsenal if they do not make it past their qualifying play-off this month?

The second leg will be played in the third week of August. This rotten soap opera could carry on harming Liverpool at least until then.

Here lies the key matter of this affair, and of the major swathe of Suarez’s career at Anfield.

His self-indulgence makes you wonder whether he is even aware how much damage he has done to the club’s good name.

Suarez tarnished his career by clashes with Evra

Liverpool may again be stuck in their stuttering cycle of regeneration rather than challenging for the title and fighting to get back into the Champions League

If he does, it seems he plainly doesn’t care, despite the weaselly attempt in his interview to claim an empathy with the fans who he says are sure to understand his need to better himself.

It isn’t just about some debt for the backing he received from the club and the supporters during his various rancid and self-inflicted troubles which is owed by Suarez.

What he owes is some good, solid work and some untroubled time doing his best in a red shirt in order to repair the wreckage he has wrought to Liverpool’s reputation.

And have no doubt that the knots in which he tied the club, as they attempted to defend the indefensible in the Patrice Evra affair, did smear Liverpool’s name.

It made them appear to lack the very values which the place has proclaimed so powerfully for so long.

First he hurled it all back by biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic.

Now he tarnishes the club yet again by accusing the manager of dishonesty.

Suarez is now asking Liverpool to honour an agreement he claims was made to let him go if they failed to reach the Champions League this season.

So what? He has no right to uphold it.

Even if he has such an agreement, he should tear it up and acknowledge that the reparation he owes Liverpool is far greater than any self-seeking clause .

It has to be pointed out that Liverpool knew exactly the kind of footballer they were buying when they signed Suarez.

But they were not the first club to take a chance on a huge talent and they won’t be the last.

Even so, he hasn’t just harmed Liverpool, he has hurt football.

The tendency now is to use the Suarez Affair to declare the whole of the modern game to be putrefying.

That just isn’t true. But Liverpool’s dramas make a torrid test case.

It is a club where the fans fight so hard to preserve the beliefs that made Anfield so special.

Their backing for Suarez was misguided but it came from their unbending, deep-rooted faith in the club.

They will be well rid of Suarez, no matter his extravagant ability.

He has no place in the great culture of Liverpool football club.

And, frankly, neither should he have one in Arsenal’s grand tradition.